Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Gun Control

On Fox News right now, there is a Canadian politician blaming gun violence in Canada on the lack of gun control in the United States. That's a load of crap, but from the Canadian point of view it makes sense.

First you have to realize that Canada is a captive of the Old Europe philosphy of controling the people. For centuries the elites in Europe have maintained power by controlling the people. There is a reason why it was illegal for peasants to own weapons. This was to prevent them from rebelling against their lords. At the time of our revolution, it was still illegal for most Europeans to own weapons. Our Founding Fathers recognized two things. 1) Our ability to rebel from the British Crown was largely based on the fact that a large percentage of the colonists were armed and familar with guns. 2) An armed population would be able to resist a despotic government. (especially when you take into account the fact that they expected there to be no standing national army.) They wanted a population that would be unable to be controlled by an elite ruling class. Because of this they purposely guareented the right to own a weapon in the Bill of Rights. Furthermore, if you examine their expectation of no standing army, and a dependence on a citizen militia for national defence, they intended this Right to include military grade weapons.

Secondly, you have to realize that the left views people as basically good unless corrupted. Thus someone who uses a gun to commit a crime is less to blame for the crime than the gun that allowed them to do so. This may seem nonsensical (and it is) but it is truly how most of them think. The right understands that there is evil in the world, and people intent on harm. We realize that if the gun was unavailable, than a different weapon (say a knife, bat, broken bottle or fist) would have been used instead.

Lastly I will simply point out that areas that have liberal gun laws (and isn't that a strange phrase politically? as opposed to Liberal Gun laws) , especially those with concealed carry permits, have less gun violence than areas with strict gun laws. This is a documented proven fact. For instance, the old West (as opposed to the misnamed Wild West) was not all that violent a place. We have been conditioned by the media (of the time as well as modern times) to believe that there were shoot outs and gun battles all the time. This isn't true. The truth is the violence was confined to a fairly small, self-selected group. People were more polite and considerate then, perhaps largely because rudeness could result in a duel or gun fight.